


Of All The Good They Did (Feanorian Week 2019)

by elvntari



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternative take on canon, Canonical Character Death, Child Loss, Father-Son Relationship, FeanorianWeek, First Age, Gen, HoME lies, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-11-26 03:56:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18175541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elvntari/pseuds/elvntari
Summary: Takes on the positive (mostly platonic) relationships that the Feanorians had.





	1. A List Of People Who Maedhros Feanorion Kind-of-raised

_1\. His brothers_

He was too old to truly be a friend to them when they were born–sure, he was equal with them later, but not at first–they were so small and so wriggly and he loved them all so much and his parents were busy enough that at least three days a week he was wandering around the house with a baby in his arms, trying his best to tolerate their whining and, later, listening with rapt attention to their incomprehensible ramblings. 

_2\. Celebrimbor_

No one had expected Curufin to lock himself away in his room/workshop/literally-whichever-room-was-big-enough-to-work-in the moment they left Alqualonde, least of all himself. His nephew was still so small and still wanted so much attention; he couldn’t just leave him playing in the corner with heavy tools and he couldn’t watch him sitting quietly and patiently outside of the door, barely holding off tears.  _“Why don’t you come outside and get some fresh air? I can teach you to ride a horse,”_  he says, and Telpe looks so grateful for the excuse to be anywhere else

_3\. Ereinion Gil-galad_

It’s been so long since anyone trusted him to childmind (he’s fairly sure he still knows how: it’s the scars that scare people off these days), but Fingon has always trusted him. The question, of course, is who the hell trusted Fingon? He doesn’t ask it. Instead, he keeps the child in his arms while politics happen in the next room, teaching him to read and write and praying hard that everything goes to plan because the kid is growing to be so kind and he doesn’t deserve any of this. 

_4\. Elros_

He demands to be taught swordplay. Of course, he refuses; he’s  _ten_ , and Maedhros isn’t entirely sure if he will ever be able to hold a sword again without painful memories spilling over every one of his senses. Instead, teaches him the virtues of keeping your thoughts to yourself, and knowing how to say exactly what people want to hear while still suggesting entirely your own ideas. He’s eager–the child  _takes notes_. And Maedhros is proud because, if even only a tiny shred of his legacy isn’t written in blood, then he will be happy.

_5\. Elrond_

Elrond wasn’t meant to overhear them. He wasn’t meant to know what they were planning to do, but he was too smart to go and sit quietly and wait for answers that would probably never come. He remembers the way he froze when he saw him standing in the doorway–the way Maglor cursed at the sight of his expression. He turned and left without a word, and Maedhros remembered what it was like to suddenly be left without any kind of support in the world. He silently swore that, if it couldn’t be him, there would always be someone to look after them. 

 


	2. The Music Room

There is a room in the house in which no one goes.

Elrond isn’t sure why--at first--but he discovers it soon enough: like the bedroom of a missing child, the music room stays closed and untouched. That door hasn’t been opened in tens of thousands of years, Nerdanel says, kindly. She has no skill in music, so why should it? 

He opens the door, and he can see the past.

Cushions strewn across the ground, with piles and piles of half-written sheet music lie across the floor; his father is hunched over them, scribbling things in the margins and making drastic modifications. He cuts bars from one and sticks them onto another, chopping and changing and humming all the while. 

In the window seat, he sits with a stylus in hand, tapping it against his lips, listening to the birds.  _They were the first musicians, Elrond, even the Valar listen to them._ He focuses with an intensity that he had almost forgotten, the only time his gaze is broken is when he blinks, and even that he avoids doing. 

And in the centre of the room is the harp. It’s the one that Maglor always used to complain about--nothing ever sounded quite as good as it. Elrond approaches it slowly, brushing ages worth of dust from its frame and allowing his fingers to hover around its strings. Tentatively, he plucks a note--the sound his divine enough in itself to make him hesitate, but that isn’t why he freezes. For just a moment, he sees his father standing next to him, laying a hand over his, guiding his fingers. He is as real as if he is there, eyes bright and touch warm.

For just a moment, the room is as it was. For just a moment, Makalaure never left. 


	3. Shattered Pieces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kind of always headcanoned that celegorm wasnt actually that bad? controversial i know

There were days when they worried about him, for all the time he spent away, returning only after a week and with an odd look in his eyes and then answering as cryptically as possible when they dared inquire. His temper tamed but replaced with something else. They would lament that if only Huan could talk, they’d have their answers.

He spent days in the forests. Maglor would watch from the height of the lookout-tower when he had a spare moment, eyes narrowed, formulating his guesses in the emptiness of newfound responsibility. These days, when he returned, he looked tired and empty, as if his mind was growing cracks, spreading throughout everything, built up someday to shatter.

But they had other priorities.

\---

There were a million reckless things that he could do in his spare time. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but he didn’t remember quite why he bothered with pretence and politeness. He wasn’t sure that he ever had. Not until they’d already made the fatal mistake did he remember, in a sharp hour of clarity left alone with himself, that he was a good person.

The reality was a terrible discovery-- _you do have a conscience, after all,_ she had said as he slipped the knife between the ropes around her wrists.  _Tell no one,_ he had replied. She thought it was odd, but the look in his eyes silenced her. As if the parts of him were scattered far and wide across all of the universe and he was trying to function missing the connecting joints.

All he could do was let her go.


	4. Do Not Fear What You Cannot Control

_Do not fear what you cannot control._

It’s the same piece of advice that gets parroted every time someone voices even the slightest discomfort with the way that things are. He never understood it. What, then, do you fear after you’ve taken control of all that you can? 

He understood what it meant:  _don’t waste your time on useless things._ But that didn’t make it work for him.

He only ever sees Haleth cry once. She stands at the top of the guard tower, staring out over the expanse in front, eyes wide and burning with crazed anger, defiance, whatever you would call that look, and tears. He thought he was hallucinating, at first. He said nothing, just stood at her side.

“What if they suffered?” She asked. “What if they suffered, and what if they really are gone with suffering all that’s left?”

He met her eyes with caution.

“I know worrying won’t bring them back, so don’t you dare say anything.”

He bit his lip. “Perhaps--”

“I  _said,_ don’t you dare say anything.”

“I was just going to ask if you wanted to take stock of the armoury,” he said,  _if you want to take your mind off things, instead._

Her expression softened. “Alright.”

Maybe the secret to not fearing wasn’t pretty words and life lessons, but simple, methodical, controllable things. Maybe the secret was taking control. 


	5. What It Is To Scream

There is a kind of pain that demands noise; an expression of rage, or confusion, or anguish. A guttural scream, blood-curdling and terrible, that echoes throughout the empty halls of an empty wing of an empty afterlife. Curufin does not know that pain well. It is new, poisonous, sickly. It twists the coils of a snake in his gut and climbs through his oesophagus, bringing up every feeling he has ever felt. 

And he does not want to be alive. A troublesome request, considering that he isn’t. 

No, he does not want to be caught dead in Mandos, either; he wants to be  _there._ He wants to be dying next to his son, promising that it will all be okay, apologising and offering the only comforts that he knows he can. 

But, instead, he is forced to fall to a close approximation of his knees, and scream alone, letting the sound echo around him.

The tapestry in front is painless enough; Telperinquar stands at the height of his life, with his friends and colleagues, laughing. The pain Curufin feels is entirely instinctual--he knows where the sudden ache that rushes through every inch of him comes from, and he knows the dread rising. He wonders how his own parents felt when  _he_ died, then he multiplies it by six.

And he thinks of his mother.

Bound eternally to the halls, unable ever to leave, she will not see him again, and he, likely, will never see Telpe again; he would not wander into these parts of the halls.

So he collapses into the cold stone of the floor and screams until the sound fills the room around him, echoing in his head until he passes out. 


	6. Hand To Hand To Heart To Spirt

Palm against the earth, he waits and listens. The world around him gave up its mysteries long ago, back when he fed plants with ashes and dust and prayed that it would all turn out okay.

The thing about spreading ashes, however, is that they blow back around.

_Just beyond the thicket._

The words go straight to his thoughts, without having to be heard. He processes them without need for sound.

“Hush,” he whispers, dropping even lower into his crouch.

_Only you can hear me._

He ignores his brother’s consciousness as it jabs at his mind.

He can’t remember how he felt the first time he heard his brother; he didn’t believe that he had died. He could still hear him, so he must still be alive. Amras had never considered that it could be possible to be unable to answer the call. Something about them being twins, he theorised, or maybe about them being Fëanorians. Or maybe the oath.

Likely, it was the effect of what all the factors did when combined with each other. Amrod could not move on while Amras lived.

_Now._

He looses the arrow and smiles the ghost of a smile as he hears it connect with its target. He was asked over and over: do you miss your brother?

_Are you just gonna let the birds have it? Come on._

But you can’t miss someone who’s still with you.


	7. Homecoming

He doesn't come back.

She waits.

All of the rest return. One by one.

Even Maglor comes home, in time.

But Fëanor doesn't.

She sits alone, listening to the sound of their sons chatting, joking, breaking down over the horrors they say and then comforting each other until everything is alright again. They're happy, they've grown up, they have people that they love.

She raised them well.

No,  _they_  raised them well.

But he won't return.

He won't come back to see the legacy that they've created because all he sees is the blood and the fire and not the beauty that's left after it's all burned clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apart from the fact i apparently, in my half-asleep, half-crazy-from-spending-eight-hours-on-a-painting haze spelt it as 'resturns,' i think this feanorian week went alright

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Change of Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18194924) by [starlightwalking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlightwalking/pseuds/starlightwalking)




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